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unshrunk.livejournal.comIf you read nothing else on how it can be to feel alone and completely misunderstood, you need to read this. I'm just floored. And a bit surprised. It's really.... Honest.
http://www.heart7.net/in-their-own-words.htm
An excerpt:
There are no Units in Maine specializing in Dissociative Disorders or Trauma Recovery work (including unique considerations for male and female survivors). "You are totally screwed if you have a Dissociative Disorder in Maine and need inpatient care." "When I was splitting (changing alters/dissociating), the psychiatrist told me all I needed was Jesus Christ and to stop that!" "During one hospitalization, after stating numerous times that certain alters were bent on self-destruction, three different members of my "treatment team" suggested to me that I should leave the hospital and ‘go home and see what happens.’ Shortly after this I was discharged." "After being discharged from a hospital with several alters openly and determinedly threatening self-destruction, I was subsequently denied admission to four hospitals and three crisis stabilization units because they said I needed ‘more help than they were able to provide.’ They finally sent me home from the emergency room to stay with a friend since I could not be alone." "If you could only say ‘I’m MPD’ and have this be accepted."
The first page of the report itself, with table of contents (from the link above, which contains full-text) is below:
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Trauma Survivors and Professionals
They Trust Tell What Hurts, What
Helps and What Is Needed for
Trauma Services
Trauma Advisory Groups Report - June 1997
( Who Wrote This Study and Who Sponsored It )
Foreword
In Their Own Words is the work of over 200 courageous women and men in the State of Maine who have dared to hope that the truth and wisdom of their experience will be heard by those in power, and that Maine’s mental health and human service systems will respond to the long ignored plight of children and adults traumatized by histories of interpersonal violence. Both survivors of abuse and the professionals they trust give voice in this book to their experiences with individuals, organizations and systems that have been shaped and influenced in such a way that they frequently harm, rather than help, the individuals they serve. Readers will be moved by their accounts of what hurts, what helps, and what is needed from our service systems for healing and recovery. It is our hope they will be moved to action.
It is time to act. It is time to reach out and to bring to an end the alienation, isolation, and maltreatment of individuals whose lives and hearts have been shattered by sexual and physical violence, who have been denied the possibility of recovery through healing therapeutic interaction, and who often end up in our state mental institutions, emergency rooms, crisis services, psychiatric wards, prisons, youth detention and treatment centers, marginal impoverished living conditions, dangerous shelters, and even homeless on the streets. Though they come from and frequently grew up in our own communities, they are stigmatized as "outsiders" as ones "other than us". They bear witness to truths of human depravity that few of us see or want to know about. They are the individuals whose stories are seldom asked about, listened to, believed, or acted upon.
But listen we must, for as long as violence such as rape, battering and the sexual and physical abuse of women and children remains endemic in our culture, and as long as the devastating impacts of such violence are misunderstood, misnamed, and unaddressed by our mental health and human service institutions, survivors will continue to be revictimized and retraumatized by the policies and practices of institutions meant to help them. Interpersonal violence will continue to be perpetuated across and through generations, and the stories and accounts of survivors and professionals contained in this book could become our own stories, or the stories of our children and grandchildren.
The majority of recipients of mental health and substance abuse services in Maine have histories of sexual or physical abuse trauma. This is not a "special population". Multiple studies show that as high as 70% to 81% of persons diagnosed with mental illness and treated in psychiatric settings have a history of sexual or physical abuse or both. Data on children and adolescents suggest even higher percentages, and anecdeotal reports in Maine indicate still higher prevalence rates for both adults and children receiving mental health services. Among those treated for substance abuse, the majority of women (conservatively 75%) and a substantial number
Ann Jennings, Ph.D. Director, Trauma Services
( To the Table of Contents we go... )
http://www.heart7.net/in-their-own-words.htm
An excerpt:
There are no Units in Maine specializing in Dissociative Disorders or Trauma Recovery work (including unique considerations for male and female survivors). "You are totally screwed if you have a Dissociative Disorder in Maine and need inpatient care." "When I was splitting (changing alters/dissociating), the psychiatrist told me all I needed was Jesus Christ and to stop that!" "During one hospitalization, after stating numerous times that certain alters were bent on self-destruction, three different members of my "treatment team" suggested to me that I should leave the hospital and ‘go home and see what happens.’ Shortly after this I was discharged." "After being discharged from a hospital with several alters openly and determinedly threatening self-destruction, I was subsequently denied admission to four hospitals and three crisis stabilization units because they said I needed ‘more help than they were able to provide.’ They finally sent me home from the emergency room to stay with a friend since I could not be alone." "If you could only say ‘I’m MPD’ and have this be accepted."
The first page of the report itself, with table of contents (from the link above, which contains full-text) is below:
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Trauma Survivors and Professionals
They Trust Tell What Hurts, What
Helps and What Is Needed for
Trauma Services
Trauma Advisory Groups Report - June 1997
( Who Wrote This Study and Who Sponsored It )
Foreword
In Their Own Words is the work of over 200 courageous women and men in the State of Maine who have dared to hope that the truth and wisdom of their experience will be heard by those in power, and that Maine’s mental health and human service systems will respond to the long ignored plight of children and adults traumatized by histories of interpersonal violence. Both survivors of abuse and the professionals they trust give voice in this book to their experiences with individuals, organizations and systems that have been shaped and influenced in such a way that they frequently harm, rather than help, the individuals they serve. Readers will be moved by their accounts of what hurts, what helps, and what is needed from our service systems for healing and recovery. It is our hope they will be moved to action.
It is time to act. It is time to reach out and to bring to an end the alienation, isolation, and maltreatment of individuals whose lives and hearts have been shattered by sexual and physical violence, who have been denied the possibility of recovery through healing therapeutic interaction, and who often end up in our state mental institutions, emergency rooms, crisis services, psychiatric wards, prisons, youth detention and treatment centers, marginal impoverished living conditions, dangerous shelters, and even homeless on the streets. Though they come from and frequently grew up in our own communities, they are stigmatized as "outsiders" as ones "other than us". They bear witness to truths of human depravity that few of us see or want to know about. They are the individuals whose stories are seldom asked about, listened to, believed, or acted upon.
But listen we must, for as long as violence such as rape, battering and the sexual and physical abuse of women and children remains endemic in our culture, and as long as the devastating impacts of such violence are misunderstood, misnamed, and unaddressed by our mental health and human service institutions, survivors will continue to be revictimized and retraumatized by the policies and practices of institutions meant to help them. Interpersonal violence will continue to be perpetuated across and through generations, and the stories and accounts of survivors and professionals contained in this book could become our own stories, or the stories of our children and grandchildren.
The majority of recipients of mental health and substance abuse services in Maine have histories of sexual or physical abuse trauma. This is not a "special population". Multiple studies show that as high as 70% to 81% of persons diagnosed with mental illness and treated in psychiatric settings have a history of sexual or physical abuse or both. Data on children and adolescents suggest even higher percentages, and anecdeotal reports in Maine indicate still higher prevalence rates for both adults and children receiving mental health services. Among those treated for substance abuse, the majority of women (conservatively 75%) and a substantial number
Ann Jennings, Ph.D. Director, Trauma Services
( To the Table of Contents we go... )
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